


V is for Vucking

by gendzl



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Bitty as a PR person for the Aces, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 10:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21073163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendzl/pseuds/gendzl
Summary: Five times Kent messes up on Twitter, and one time Bitty does. Based onthis post!





	V is for Vucking

**Author's Note:**

> I will literally never be fully happy with this, but here. Have the thing. [Also posted on tumblr, [here](https://gendzl.tumblr.com/post/175262562011/bittyparse-5-1)]

[1]

It starts off somewhat innocently, with the tweet: “Captain Hook is totally gay.”

Kent is pretty proud of that one, right up until the moment a member of the Aces back office appeared _out of fucking nowhere_ in an empty hallway and stared him down from a height of not-that-tall.

“We need to talk.”

Kent winces. He’s been hearing that a lot lately. “What?”

Handsome Aces Dude of Dubious Office Origin holds up his phone, Kent’s latest tweet on the screen. “Really? It’s 2017, Parson. This particular brand of homophobia doesn’t exactly fly here.”

Kent reels. “Whoa whoa whoa. What?! _Homophobia_? That was _not_ homophobic, short stuff.”

The man doesn’t respond to the jab at his height except to stand a bit straighter.

Kent goes on before he could be misconstrued yet again. “_I’m_ gay, man. I, a gay man, was commenting on the blatant gayness of another man. Albeit a fictional one.”

The guy’s wind leaves his sails. “Oh. OH! Okay, well, that’s great, but you’re not out and a lot of people are taking it the wrong way.”

Kent rolls his eyes and pulls his phone from his breast pocket. He scrolls a bit, taps the screen a few times, and then sidesteps the guy. “Fine; I deleted it. Later, Blondie.”

* * *

[2]

The next time they have reason to meet, Kent learns his name. Eric.

He does _not_ look like an Eric.

“This is my fourth month on the job, Kent, and before yesterday I had no reason to ever meet you face-to-face. Now I’m seeing you again, not even 24 hours later. Explain yourself.”

Four months… Something was nagging at him. When he got it, Kent snapped his fingers. “Wait, does that mean you’re _Eric_? Eric the Hot New PR Dude? WOW, you do not look at _all_ how I pictured you.”

Eric juts a hip out, fist resting on it like he’d much rather it were somewhere else. Like breaking his nose, for example. “And how, exactly, were you picturing me?”

Kent smirks. “Taller.”

One slow deep breath later, Eric meets Kent’s eyes, his own bright with barely restrained fury, causing Kent to recoil a bit inside. There’s no way a tweet could have brought on this much ire.

“Whoa, dude, what’d I ever do to you?”

“Nothing. Just…. Delete the tweet, okay? Maybe spend some more time tweeting pictures of your cat and less time trying to create a rift in the space-time continuum.”

Eric stalks off without another word.

Kent doesn’t delete the tweet.

Two hours later Eric storms back into the dressing room, snatches Kent’s phone from his hands, and deletes it himself.

* * *

[3]

@bruinsfan101: @KennyParson29 Kent VUCKING Parson.

He snorts quietly into the silence of his car, face illuminated by the eerie glow of his screen. It’s nearing one in the morning, and he’s a bit punch drunk off their win and, well, the punching.

This is the funniest thing in the world right now.

In fact… He retweets it, and then goes to his profile and edits his name for good measure before driving home.

He’s awoken too few hours later by a pounding on his front door. (Yes, front door, as in, in relation to another entrance – because he has multiple doors now, because he bought a house. Homeowner. Fully functional adult. Kent V. Parson) (V for Victory, but also more recently for Vucking.)

Dragging his bruised ass out of bed and down the stairs (Lord, what possessed him to buy a house with stairs?) Kent answers the door to find Eric standing on his porch.

Fuming.

But in a Southern way, which is infinitely more terrifying.

“Darlin’,” he says sweetly, “I’m gonna need you to give me your cell phone.”

Kent just stares at him blearily, somewhat intimidated but mostly just wanting the loud noises to stop. He leaves his front door (man, he loves that) open in a wordless invitation and shuffles back upstairs, dropping face first onto his unmade bed and gesturing wordlessly to where he has a vague recollection of tossing his phone before passing out. He’s pretty sure that it’s charged.

“Your phone’s dead.”

Okay, so it’s _not_ charged. “In m’bag,” he mumbles.

“And where’s that?”

“Closet.” It comes out more like ‘clawsd’ but apparently Eric can speak fluent Exhausted Jock because he finds it in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and they spend the next few minutes in blissful silence. Kent even starts to doze off again.

A weight settles on the edge of his bed and Kent groans. Great. A Lecture.

“So, do you like pancakes?”

Kent’s eyes pop open in surprise. “Huh?”

Eric is staring down at him in amusement, no hint of his earlier ire in his expression. “Pan. Cakes. Do. You. Like. Them?”

He nods and Eric hops up off the bed and makes for the door. “Great! Come down in fifteen.”

Fifteen – or possibly twenty-five – minutes later a somewhat less scantily clad Kent Vucking Parson (realizing he’d answered the door in nothing but his underwear was a bit of an eye-opening trip) makes his way downstairs, following the scent of warm food.

Where the fuck did he find bacon?

“Where the fuck did you find bacon?”

“I brought it with me. A gentleman is always prepared,” Eric says, plating up a stack of blueberry pancakes. He definitely didn’t have blueberries either. Was this man’s car a roving grocery store? Did he have a miniature cooler hooked up to his cigarette lighter….plug…thing?

Kent perches on his barstool feeling somewhat apprehensive. Eric is being awful nice to him, considering that he’s managed to singlehandedly piss him off and make his job more difficult three times already just this week. He decides to go for blunt. “What’s with the attitude adjustment?”

Eric blushes lightly, two spots of pink high on his cheekbones. “Nothing; don’t worry about it. Though I am sorry if my behavior has been at all unprofessional.”

Kent arches a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Unprofessional? I think you making pancakes in my kitchen at – oh Lord, it’s 6:30 in the morning – I think that’s a little more unprofessional than some lingering team rivalry or whatever the hell your ‘tude was.”

Eric huffs out a breath, lower lip jutting out adorably. He screws up his nose and then says, rapidly, “I’m friends with Jack,” before turning back to the stove.

Something in Kent shrivels and dies. “Oh.”

Eric wheels back around suddenly, spatula in one hand and frying pan in the other. He looks like he’s about to cry, which is pretty much how Kent feels at the moment. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I just. I wasn’t sure if you knew who I was and if you did I wasn’t sure if you’d want to talk to me and then we met and it was pretty clear you had no idea who I was which was somewhat of a relief seeing as how we gotta work together sometimes and I was just so used to emailing you whenever I needed you to do something that I wasn’t prepared for a face-to-face and I’m really sorry, Kent, honest.” He cuts off his own rambling, setting the pan with a half-cooked, half-congealed pancake back on the burner.

“How is Jack?” Kent asks, aiming for nonchalant and missing by a mile.

“Good, I think. We haven’t talked much since I moved out here.”

Kent snorts. “Figures.”

“Eat your pancakes, Parson.”

* * *

[4]

“So if you’re friends with Jack, does that mean I’m not allowed to flirt with you?” Kent asks about a week later, apropos of nothing.

Eric looks up from his computer so fast he’ll probably need to visit the team chiropractor later for whiplash. Kent is standing in the doorway to his office, looking all……Kent-y. (That is, he’s fresh off the ice and his cheeks are pink from exertion and his hair is all mussed and he’s _shirtless_ and oh LORD Eric get a gosh damn grip.)

Still slightly dazed, Eric says, “What?” in the general direction of Kent’s abdomen.

If ever a person has smirked, it’d be Kent. Pleased as punch with himself, this boy. He knows _exactly_ what he’s doing.

“I guess I have my answer. G’night, Eric.”

“Hmm? Oh. Goodnight.” Eric turns his attention back to his computer screen, not registering much of anything until a few moments later when his twitter notification bubble ticks over from naught to 3.

He clicks it, unwitting.

@KennyParson29: What’s the protocol surrounding flirting with your ex’s ex?  
@KennyParson29: What’s the protocol surrounding flirting with someone your ex is friends with but you’re not sure if they ever actually dated?  
@KennyParson29: Does worrying about this publicly somewhere both of them will definitely see it and know you’re talking about them defeat the purpose?

“KENT VICTORY VUCKING PARSON GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE.”

* * *

[5]

@KennyParson29: Who else remembers the infamous Steers & Queers tweet?  
@KennyParson29: Game night in Dallas!! I am not a cow.

“KENNY PARSON ARE YOU TRYING TO GET SOMEONE TO KILL YOU OUT THERE ON THE ICE BECAUSE YOU’RE GETTING MIGHTY CLOSE AND I’M NOT SURE IT’S GONNA BE SOMEONE ON THE OPPOSING TEAM.” Eric slams his way into the locker room, door bouncing off the wall with a **_bang_**. “IT JUST MIGHT BE **ME**.”

He holds out his hand without another word, and Kent passes his phone over sheepishly. When it’s handed back a few tense minutes later, nothing appears to have been changed.

“What did you do?” he asks suspiciously.

Eric’s smile is downright menacing. “Nothing at all. Have a good game, Kenny.” He drops a kiss on Kent’s cheek, pats it, and leaves.

He has a _disastrous_ game.

Eric lets himself into Kent’s hotel room immediately after, carrying manila folders and a grim expression. He dumps the folders onto the foot of the bed and then sits beside Kent. He drops a hand down to squeeze Kent’s knee and his voice is soft when he says, “I told the guys to give you some space tonight. If you want to see them, you can, but I thought you might want some quiet after all that madness.

“Alright. Now, the _next time_ you decide to come out in a tweet fifteen minutes before the start of a game, _you tell me first_.”

“What?”

“I have plans in place, Kent! Good plans! But they’re really only useful when I have a bit of notice.” He rifles around for a moment and hands Kent one of the folders. “Here, read this and let me know if you want anything changed. It’s brief, but we can do a longer thing later after this has all died down a bit.”

Kent flips it open.

_Kent Parson came out tonight, immediately prior to his game against the Detroit Red Wings. While the announcement that he’s gay was certainly off the cuff, it was not insincere. <strike>Nor was it largely unexpected by his PR team.</strike>_

_The Las Vegas Aces individually and as a whole would like to make it clear that we fully support our captain. Bigotry will not be tolerated on the ice any more than it’s been tolerated in our locker rooms or on the streets._

_Hockey is for everyone._

“You knew I’d come out with an unplanned tweet?”

Eric snorts rather sardonically. “Honey, what else would it be? You’ve been a pain in my Twitter from day one.”

Kent furrows his brow. “Speaking of which, what did you do with my phone earlier?”

“Nothing.” He looks up to find Kent staring at him. “No, really, nothing. I wasn’t about to make it worse for you by trying to take the tweets back. I just needed you to feel bad for a minute or two. Sorry if it affected your game, though.”

“It didn’t. The other team affected my game, not you.”

Eric hums in agreement, not taking his eyes from his own stack of paperwork. “They sure did. How’s your shoulder, hon?”

“…Fine.”

He raises a brow with all the skepticism in Georgia. “Kenny, I will give you every dollar in my wallet if you can raise your arm above your head right now without wincing.”

Kent grits his teeth and obliges.

Eric sighs, reaching into his pocket to pass Kent a single dollar bill. A moment of bewildered silence passes between them before Eric’s stoic expression cracks into a grin. “I went grocery shopping earlier.”

* * *

[+1]

@LasVegasAces: Thank you all for your very vocal support! The outpouring of love we’ve received from everyone in the last 3 days has been heartwarming. @KennyParson29 and I are overwhelmed.  
@KennyParson29: .@LasVegasAces “We”? “Kent and I”? Sounds awful gay and couple-y there, bud.  
@LasVegasAces: Shit.

@EricBittyBittle: SHIT!  
@KennyParson29: Come downstairs? I made pancakes. (:


End file.
